Sunday, November 25, 2001
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Sunday, November 25, 2001 |
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The Human and the Holy Spirit By DR. KNOX HERNDON Those of us of the Christian faith whose belief it is that we are created in God's image, realize that the human spirit is very strong and can withstand most anything. The day after Thanksgiving my wife Dee and I were watching the Today Show with Katie Couric and Matt Lowery. They were featuring a very famous blind tenor who had a marvelous voice. They were performing at the Rockefeller Center outside. It appeared to be a blustery day with an overcast sky, and it looked like rain at any minute. It is interesting how an image will trigger an experience one has had from the past. As I watched that wonderful blind tenor get up to the microphone and the accompanying stringed orchestra beginning to play, my mind's eye went back to Berlin Germany 1978. My family and I have experienced extreme temperatures both hot and cold as we have traveled and lived around the world but personally I have never felt as cold as I did in those Prussian winters in East Germany. I have slept out in a tent in Alaska during military training at minus 50 degrees which is 50 degrees below zero. Somehow to me the winters in Berlin when the Berlin Wall was up was colder. It is hard to paint the picture of this truly beautiful city which has been the capital of Germany with this ugly scar of the Berlin Wall running right through the middle of it. Imagine your city with a street running one direction only to be met with an 18 feet concrete wall built right over the street and any building bordering that wall bricked up! Then you had the guard towers approximately every 50 yards with searchlights flooding the wall with orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to escape. With this back drop, we would get our paperwork completed and then bundle up and drive our car through the then famous, "Checkpoint Charley" which housed our armed American soldiers protecting our access into and out of East Berlin. I will never forget a trip Dee and I made through the checkpoint on a Saturday about this time of the year. There was snow on the ground and one of those Prussian winters was in full swing. We went to a Christmas market in East Berlin at Alexander Platz. Since the Communist were officially atheistic, they heavenly restricted any public display of Christmas. They did allow trees to be put up but called them "new years" trees. There were several pitiful makeshift booths with homemade articles with people trying to make a few Deutsch Marks for Christmas. There, on the other side of the square, stood four musicians trying to keep their feet warm by stomping their feet to keep their circulation moving in the cold. Dee and I walked over to them and stood there as they lifted their instruments to play. They looked at us being obviously from the free Western zone and began to play "Amazing Grace." Although we were not suppose to engage in conversation with the East Germans due to the political climate, we pointed up to heaven and they shook their heads in agreement. The human spirit is truly remarkable as to what it can endure. The families in East Berlin and the families in West Berlin during the years the Wall was up could not, and did not, see their families for 12 years, yet they lived maybe one street on the other side of the Wall. They would go to the observation decks and climb up and wave to their relatives and hold up babies so their relatives could see their children whom they had never held. Many people this Thanksgiving and this Christmas are going through some terrible times in their families with the loss of loved ones and employment and in the loss of our lives as we knew them before 9/11. Two scriptures come to my mind in times like these. "Be of good cheer I have overcome the world." Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the Earth. Jesus
Dr. Knox Herndon is the pastor of "His House Community Church" (SBC) His wife Dr. Lydia Herndon is the Sunday School Superintendent, Bible study coordinator and teacher. Rev. Greg Mausz is Sr. Assoc. Pastor. The church has moved to the new location just below Senoia on GA. Highway 85. As you leave Fayetteville going South on Highway 85, you cross Highway 16, at Senoia intersection, It is a mile on the right just below the fire station. If you are not in a church, come visit us. Church office and Prayer line (770)-719-2365 E-Mail KHERN2365@aol.com
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